


This Forgotten Space

by hermette



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-04
Updated: 2010-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-07 17:31:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermette/pseuds/hermette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it feels good, this tiny risk, this little piece of living</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Forgotten Space

It isn't until he is sitting in this hollowed out, rusted shell of what was presumably once a car that Arthur fully realizes how numb life has made him. It is the absence of this numbness that makes him aware of it in the first place; sitting here in this old junkyard with Merlin makes him feel over-sensitized, skin too hot and stretched too tight. He is too aware of everything around him. He can taste the rain in the air, can feel every ridge in the cracked seat: here is the scrape of the rough vinyl against his neck, here is the slight weight of the lighter in his pocket. His shirt has gone soft with washing, his shoes laced too tight. And beside him, Merlin's skin is too pale, his hair too dark, his gaze too familiar. Arthur shifts in his seat, the sound of it lost in another clap of thunder.

"Any fucking minute," Merlin says, rolling his head against the headrest to glance at Arthur. Arthur peers up at the sky through the car's rusted out roof. Merlin is right; the thunderhead is right above them now, and the sky all around is gray-black. Arthur wonders if Merlin is waiting on him or if it's the other way round, and then he thinks that maybe they're just waiting together, waiting for the last possible moment to bolt, to try and outrun the rain.

They're going to get soaked. They're going to get soaked regardless of when they leave. They'd get soaked if they'd left ten minutes ago, but Arthur doesn't care, because it feels good, this tiny risk, this little piece of living. It feels good to _not know_, feels good that this is not a woman who will moan in the same places and line her shoes up in the closet the same way every night. This is not a board meeting with the same faces, the same suits, the same reprimands, the same pens, papers, presentations, the same coffee, the same stale muffins. This is Merlin, who is his own brand of infuriating, but amazing all the same, wonderful in unexpected ways and never predictable.

"Now!" Merlin shouts. He leaps out of the car and Arthur darts after him. They sprint through the piles of long abandoned rubbish, old cans and boots, that half-buried avocado green fridge with the inexplicable "Don't Mess With Texas" magnet still affixed to the door. Merlin whoops as a flash of lightening skitters across the sky. They reach the fence and grab their bikes, hop on them and tear off down the road.

The storm breaks as they reach the main road, the sky opens and sheets of rain pour down on them. Arthur laughs, breathless, delighted, his shirt and jeans soaked through almost immediately, stuck to his skin. This is reckless; the bike is at least a dozen years old, hasn't been ridden in half that and the brakes barely worked when they were dry, but Arthur bends low anyway, grins at the earthy taste of the rain as it drips into his mouth, and pedals as fast as he can, his lungs and legs burning with the effort.

It feels like it takes twice as long to cover the distance now, but eventually they reach Merlin's house. They drop their bikes in front of the garage and burst through the door, laughing stupidly. It feels good to laugh like this, carelessly, like something dark shaking loose, so Arthur laughs and laughs, tips his head back against the wood paneling of Hunith's wall as he drips onto the scrubbed floor.

"Come on," Merlin says eventually. "We're getting water everywhere."

He follows Merlin to the linen cupboard and takes a towel from him, towels his hair down and then follows him up the stairs. He is not surprised when he leads them past the second landing and Merlin's room and up to the attic, where the pounding of the rain sounds like an oncoming army. The air is cooler up here; Arthur shivers and strips off his shirt and drops it into a sodden heap on the floor.

Not much has changed up here since the pair of them were teenagers, holed away smoking too much weed and making questionable music choices. The window that looks out over the tiny back garden is still smudged with fingerprints, the windowsill listing slightly to the left. There is a stack of boxes in one corner with Merlin's name printed in Hunith's tidy hand, a Hoover that hasn't worked since before Arthur hit puberty, old framed pictures wrapped in brown butcher's paper. Shoved up against the east wall is a sunken old camp bed, and Arthur has dreams about the bed, about the musty smell of the mattress and Merlin arching beneath questioning fingers. He turns from the bed and picks at a place on the wall where the plaster has started to peel off, watches Merlin root around in the creepy old cupboard where they used to hide their stash.

"Empty," Merlin finally says, grinning as he turns around and holds out his hands, palms up.

Arthur barks out a laugh. "A great tragedy," he says.

"And yet we press on."

Merlin toes off his trainers and then bends down, pulls off his soaked socks. He tugs his shirt over his head, drops it all into a pile and stretches out on the camp bed. Arthur hovers there for a minute, uncertain, and then he pulls off his own socks and shoes, lies down beside Merlin.

The bed is too small, smaller than he remembers and they're pressed up against one another, skin damp and clammy. It's ok, though. It's sort of nice, because it's new and familiar all at once and Arthur has that uneasy squirm in the pit of his stomach, like he's about to do something reckless. It's been ages since he felt that.

"So you hated London," Merlin says and Arthur can't help but laugh at how Merlin frames that, like London wasn't the bastard in their relationship, like London didn't chew him up and spit him out the other side, mangled and torn, fired from a job at his father's firm, kicked out of a flat in his father's building, dumped by a woman of his father's choosing.

"I had," he says, turning his head to look at Merlin's profile, "the best day."

Merlin grins up at the rafters. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. The best day in -- shit, man -- in years."

Merlin doesn't answer, and Arthur isn't quite sure he wants him to, because what could he possibly say? Since the moment Arthur showed up unbidden on Merlin's doorstep this afternoon, five years of distance between them, Merlin has done nothing but what Arthur wanted. Everything from the food, the pizza and beer they ate while leaning over Hunith's perfectly scrubbed sink to the stupid shit, scaling their old school and spray painting their names on the roof. The chocolate they nicked from the spar shop at the edge of town, even the trip to the old junkyard was Arthur's idea because he was feeling poetic or some shit, wanted to be surrounded by devastation not of his own making. Of _course_ it was a good day for him, traipsing around like his life wasn't falling down around his ears, dragging Merlin along with him.

But Merlin hasn't seemed to mind, not really. He's a grown man, even if he has taken a year off his studies to move back home with his _mother_, for which Arthur will tease him when his own life isn't quite such rubbish, and he's been more than willing all day, has tagged along with Arthur every step of the way. He can't be sure, though, that this means to Merlin what it means to him. He can't read him anymore the way he used to, and it's hard to think clearly with the rain thundering down as it is, and the air prickly with static across his skin.

Arthur lets his eyes drift closed. He's tired. He might just go to sleep right here in this rickety old camp bed, Merlin pressed all down his side, might just let the rise and fall of Merlin lull him under. In fact, he'll do just that, he thinks. He'll sleep here tonight and maybe Merlin will make him cinnamon toast and tea in the morning and maybe they'll go into town and see a film. Arthur thinks he'd like that. They could share a popcorn, laugh when it spills in their laps, link their buttery fingers together and just sit together in the dark.

And then Merlin's breathing changes, hitches, just a little, barely a warning and then he's rolling over on top of Arthur, their legs slotting together like they've done this a hundred times, and maybe they have, maybe there have been a hundred moments between them, a hundred lifetimes of trying to get it right, a thousand, million looks and touches and smiles leading up to this. Arthur fits his hands to Merlin's hips without a thought, presses his fingertips into the small of Merlin's back and curls one leg around his calf, toes pressing up and in, beneath the wet denim of Merlin's jeans.

Merlin's breath is a hot exhale against his lips in the instant before their mouths meet, and then they're kissing, twined together like ivy growing out of this forgotten space. It's a soft press at first, nothing but warmth and damp skin pressed together; they share a breath, two, and then Merlin is angling his head, shifting his weight and pressing up on one hand and skimming the other up Arthur's side so that he opens Arthur's mouth under his at the same instant that he reaches Arthur's chest, fingers spread wide and splayed over Arthur's sternum. Arthur kisses him, lets himself be kissed by Merlin, lies on his back and opens his mouth so that Merlin can slip his tongue inside, arches into the places where Merlin's body is hot against his own.

"I want--" Merlin says, his voice rough with something unspeakable. "Arthur -- I've always wanted --"

His words are dangerous, they're terrifying and thrilling, raging within Arthur like the storm without, so he kisses them out of Merlin's mouth, surges off the bed and tangles his fingers in Merlin's wet hair, uses that leverage to pull himself up, to pull Merlin down to him, slide their mouths together messy and hot and the other side of desperate. Merlin thrusts down, into the cradle of Arthur's hips. Arthur can feel the heat of his erection even through all of their soaking clothes. He's hard already, harder with every roll of Merlin's hips.

"God," he breathes, when Merlin finally pulls his mouth away to press a line of wet, open-mouthed kisses down Arthur's throat. He hitches his calf higher up the length of Merlin's leg, tries to find a better angle, and Merlin exhales into the hollow of his throat.

"I want--"

And Arthur groans, groans out something that sounds like nothing and means everything, means yes to any question -- to every question Merlin could be asking. He rakes his fingernails up the length of Merlin's back, curls his fingers around his narrow shoulders and rolls them over, presses Merlin down into the bare mattress. His hands are everywhere -- he wants to be everywhere at once, feel everything all at once. He tangles his fingers in all that dark hair, then moves them down, fits them under the jut of Merlin's jaw to feel the way it works as he moves his mouth beneath Arthur's.

His body is already pounding with lust, his temples, his throat, most of all between his legs where his cock is fit snugly against Merlin's, where every stutter of his hips is almost unbearable.

"Hang on--" Merlin is saying. And then, "Arthur -- wait -- you've got to--"

It takes the words several moments to penetrate his lust-addled haze, but when they do he freezes, pushes himself up and away, rolling away from Merlin, because of course. Of course, they're mates, have been for the better part of two decades and they can't just --

But maybe they can -- maybe they can _just_, because Merlin is yanking at the zipper of his jeans, tugging the wet fabric down his thighs. He yanks his jeans and his boxers off in one go, water flying everywhere, and then he dives for Arthur, knocking him backward onto the bed and peeling Arthur out of his jeans.

"Oh God," whimpers Arthur, when their sodden clothes have been disposed of on the dusty floor and Merlin has one leg shoved between Arthur's. He makes an experimental thrust upward, ruts against the rough expanse of Merlin's thigh and fuck -- _fuck_ \-- that's good, better than good, fucking brilliant, bloody _amazing_, this is the kind of shit that drives men to write poetry, to compose ballads, to lose themselves in the bottom of a bottle.

"Arthur, Arthur," Merlin says, groans it against Arthur's cheek, so close to his ear that the sound echoes around inside his head. He thrusts his hips down, his cock sliding smoothly in the hollow of Arthur's hip. He rolls his hips again and again, smearing a wet trail up to Arthur's stomach.

And Arthur wants to _see_, wants to look down and watch, wants visual proof that this is happening, that it's real and that this is Merlin. But he can't, he can't do anything but screw his eyes shut, clutch at the corner of the mattress with one hand and fumble at Merlin's waist with the other until Merlin takes it, slides their fingers together and presses their linked hands into the mattress above Arthur's head.

"You," Merlin breathes into Arthur's skin.

And then -- then he doesn't need to see, doesn't need to prove anything to himself, because this is Merlin's voice in his ear, it's Merlin's breath on his face and Merlin's weight above his. This is Merlin -- it's _Merlin_ \--

"Merlin," Arthur gasps as he comes -- "_Merlin--_," as he loses himself with a force that is overwhelming and terrifying.

Above him, Merlin gasps and then he thrusts again, again, again and then he's coming himself, the space between them going hot and slick. He kisses Merlin then, lets go of the mattress in favor of curling his hand around the nape of Merlin's neck and fitting their mouths together. He can feel the curve of Merlin's smile and that makes Arthur smile, makes the kiss sloppy and silly. One of them laughs, then the other does and then they're sitting up, wrapping their arms around one another and holding on.

Arthur presses his face to the curve of Merlin's shoulder, mouths at the salty sweetness of his skin and lets himself be pulled down, lets Merlin arrange them just so. Then Merlin is pressing a kiss to his temple, mumbling something incoherent.

It should be cold, Arthur thinks absently as sleep pulls him down, but it's not, not with Merlin snug against his side, contentment spread out along his skin, tucked away as they are beneath their blanket of thunder, between sheets of lightening.


End file.
